Quote about widows – Alias Grace – Margaret Atwood

Then I thought about widows — about widow’s humps, and widow’s walks, and the widow’s mite in the Bible, which we servants were always being urged to give to the poor out of our wages; and also I thought about how the men would wink and nod when a young and rich widow was mentioned, and how a widow was a respectable thing to be if old and poor, but not otherwise; which is quite strange when you come to consider it.